Scorched
by Shameful Second Account
Summary: Another day, another fight to save the Earth. Or so it seems. Why is Dib so heated all of a sudden? Since when is Zim actually competent? And why does the lab have enormous vents inside of it? You will find the answers within!


**A/N: I wrote this over 2 years ago and I just found it again. It originally came to me in a dream. One-shot.**

"Give me the disc Earth-filth!" Zim screamed after the retreating boy, sprinting after him on spidery PAK legs. His throat ached horribly and his green-skinned face was purple with heat. He was having serious trouble chasing the sixteen year old, which was most definitely abnormal. Usually it was the human that could not keep pace with the alien. However, much to Dib's delight and Zim's discontent, he was far ahead of his enemy by this time and increasing the gap between them steadily, despite the fact he had no cheating fake legs to run on. Dib smiled to himself as he sprinted as fast as he could, despite the fact his own lungs were also burning and he was terribly overheated.

"Never! I know this disc is part of some sort of evil plan and I'm going to put a stop to it!" Dib shouted back over his shoulder as he raced ahead of Zim, dodging wires and jumping over large containers of lab equipment. Zim's lab was as crowded as always, and if anything, this section looked to be one of the more cluttered ones. Boxes were stacked haphazardly about the room and tables lined with beakers, chemicals, and various tools took up a decent amount of space. There were open air ducts all along the bottom and the top of the lab. The ones at the top were connected by large, unsecured, metal tubes about the diameter of a tire. The whole thing looked like a large, silver jungle, and it made for a difficult getaway. It didn't help that Dib was in a part of the base he had yet to chart and he had only a vague idea as to where he was going.

A huge pile of mechanical parts lay on one of the many shelves on the tops of the walls, teetering precariously. A plan formulated in Dib's brain. He shoved them all off using his left hand, as his right was occupied by the CD, directly in the path of his tired enemy who couldn't help but fall on them with a yell of surprise and pain. Dib surged ahead, making more space between the two of them while getting closer and closer to what he could tell instinctively was the way out of the lab. Plus, there was a big sign neon above it reading "EXIT."

The doorway was still about a football field and a half away from Dib, and there were lots of obstacles in his way, he wasn't completely in the clear yet, but he was doing considerable better than his exhausted foe. He shoved another huge box of parts in the way of his enemy. Zim, barely able to get up after his last fall, ran right into the mess and cursed loudly in Irken as wrenches and screws rained down on him like some kind of painful metal confetti. His PAK legs were bent at an odd angle; it was obvious they had been broken either on impact or from the tools. He swore again as he stood up on his own two, wobbly legs, which promptly gave out from underneath him in a surprising display of weakness.

"Pathetic worm-baby! You and that CD won't escape my lab any time soon if my roboparents have anything to say about it!" Despite his pain and fatigue, Zim smirked and pushed a button on his arm. Instantly, two six foot tall robots appeared from trapdoors in the floor behind Dib. Their mouths were open in rapacious grins and their normally dull, vacant eyes were bright and alert. They stretched their arms out towards him as they ran, giant metal tentacles following him over tables as he sprinted ahead. It seemed to Dib that the roboparents had changed in some way since their last encounter. He couldn't put his finger on what was so odd about them, but he was certain they were different. They charged after Dib as Zim lay on the ground where he fell, their metallic arms waving ahead of them like demented wacky inflatable flailing arm tube men. The Invader cackled as he got up and walked towards a giant desk chair about twenty feet from the piles of fallen machinery.

The chair was twice as large as Zim with a black frame and a dark blue seat stained with soda spills and pizza grease. A giant spotlight was trained on it from above, and a microphone and camera were attached to its arms. He climbed up onto it using his fully functional PAK legs and adjusted the microphone and camera until they were at a comfortable level. Zim slid a panel of five buttons out from underneath the seat. He pushed a crimson one and a dozen television screens flipped into view all over the place, with more in other rooms where Dib could not see. They were each around three feet wide and two and a half feet tall and bore the Irken symbol. Their red and black frames were tilted towards eye level for someone around six feet tall, which was great for Dib considering he was six foot four. Zim hit a fiery orange button, and all the screens came to life, bearing the Irken's smug face.

"Hello Dib. I installed this little feature of my lab just for you. It allows you to watch me as I destroy your world as you know it. It also lets me monitor you and watch as my robots chase you down and eventually kill you. Won't this be fun?" Zim sneered at the camera. He pushed a third button, this one bright yellow, and numerous cameras popped all across the lab. At the same time, something similar to a control panel, except covered in screens, rose out of the ground directly in front of the Irken. They were all turned on and showed various parts of the lab from different angles. One, labeled No. 7, featured a tiny Dib sprinting away from the roboparents, his eyes wide in panic. Zim grinned and sat forward in the chair, eager to watch the chase. He also loosened his collar slightly; he was starting to sweat.

Dib looked up at one of the many screens as he ran for his life towards the elusive exit, which almost seemed to be getting farther and farther away. It showed the Irken's entire, barely five foot form bent double over his array of miniature terminals. His eyes were focused entirely on one display, magenta orbs reflecting the tiny people within the monitor. Dib had no idea why the whole thing seemed different to him, almost wrong. It took him a couple seconds of letting it stew before he realized what was the matter.

"Hey! That's my chair you're sitting in!" he yelled at the screen that he was now passing. He glared at another display, brow furrowed in confusion. He wondered how Zim had gotten his chair, and how it had become so big. The alien had either not heard his first exclamation or not cared enough to reply. In any case, he simply turned to another monitor, this one labeled No. 11, and watched some more, pausing to unbutton the top of his shirt. His skin was shiny with sweat and he looked flushed.

The roboparents rolled after Dib at a surprisingly fast speed. It was terrifying how quickly they were catching up considering their size and poor excuses for wheels. Dib glanced backwards and saw them there, chasing him at nearly twice his own speed. All the space he had made between himself and Zim was quickly being eradicated by the robotic servants. He saw that he could only go on for so long before he was overtaken by them, so he did the only thing he could do. He shoved another box of miscellaneous parts of the wall in the way of the robots. It was a direct hit. They were slowed down by this onslaught of machinery, and Dib could tell by the monitor above him that Zim had also been distracted by this new development, looking worriedly at the screen showing his roboparents, and nothing else.

Seizing the opportunity, Dib raced ahead and darted behind a tall stack of boxes. There, he found a three foot high and three foot wide circular air vent. He crawled into it on his hands and knees, pausing only to stick the disc he was currently clutching into the inside of his jacket pocket. He had no idea why none of the ducts had coverings, but he was grateful for it. It was dark and slightly dusty inside the huge tube, but it was an escape. He began crawling on his hands and knees that way, leaving the Invader behind him. There were lights along the tunnel and Dib guessed, correctly, that these were more air ducts. Looking through the first of these open holes, he watched one of the many television screens cautiously, ready to run if need be, but still wanting to see what his enemy was doing.

"Oh come on! Go faster! Why can't you do anything right?" Zim screeched as he glared at the monitors while his stupid minions struggled to get out of the mess. Their method? Standing up slowly and then walking forward, only to trip on more parts. It took them forty seconds to get out of the maze of machinery, and by the end, Zim was shaking with rage. It didn't help that when he looked at the other displays, he realized that he had lost sight of the teen. He screamed in anger, a loud, sharp, cutting noise that chilled Dib to the bone, despite the fact it was sweltering inside the tube and he could hardly breathe without coughing on the dust. Miraculously, neither the roboparents nor Zim heard him do so.

Dib turned away from the monitor and began crawling forward again, trying to breathe in as little as possible, for the air now smelled like cherry cough syrup and he was beginning to taste a little in his mouth. He sneezed a few times as well, and his nose started to run slightly, though this was quickly stopped by a large collection of tissues he had in his pocket. As he pulled them out, he couldn't help but wonder where he got them.

Dib shrugged off their strange appearance, finding it best not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and continued down the tunnel of light. His crouched form barely squeezed through the pipes and more than once he had to stop and readjust as his trench coat had a tendency to get caught on a screw or a pipe or some other thing. In the end, he simply shrugged it off and continued on his way, pausing only to take out the precious cargo and slip it in his front jean pocket.

He powered through the pain that was beginning to form in his knees and back from staying bent over for so long and got himself another ten yards before he started to sneeze loudly and uncontrollably. Dib decided to take a quick break, sitting on his haunches and waiting for the symptoms to subside. Although really, he didn't have much choice in the matter seeing as he couldn't breathe. When he finally started forward again, he took care not to take in the air as much as possible. He had no idea if this was what was causing his bizarre symptoms or if he was simply coming down with something, but he didn't want to take any chances.

Dib's skin was starting to burn beneath his dark blue shirt and he took this off as well, dropping it behind him. He was unknowingly leaving a trail in this manner, a trail that proved to be highly problematic for him at a later time. However, being currently occupied with the task of getting himself to the exit before he was found proved to be a more pressing concern, as he completely ignored all thoughts that didn't directly relate to getting him out of there as fast as possible.

Zim scowled in anger and disgust at his failures for lab projects as he opened most of his shirt to the warm, but slightly cooler air of the lab. His skin was burning and he was so hot, it felt as though he was being boiled alive. Only the bottom three clasps of his newly issued, fiery red, button-down uniform remained in place. He glowered at his screens and the tiny roboparents on them, more irritated than he had ever been in his entire life, to the point where he would have gladly wrung Dib's stupid human neck with his bare hands had the boy been there. He couldn't believe how _close _he had come to capturing him, only to have the teen slip between his fingers. It was more than he could bear.

He furrowed his brow in thought for a few seconds when all of a sudden, it hit him. Zim knew how to get to Dib. His angry mood melted away and he smiled to himself, despite his fatigue. The Irken pressed the small button under his sleeve again, and the robots rolled over to him at insanely fast speeds. They quickly covered the two hundred yards that they had already explored in what seemed to be the blink of an eye. Zim turned his chair to face them before speaking.

"Roboparents-" he started before having a brief coughing fit. When he regained his composure, he spoke again. "Roboparents, spread out and find the Dib-stink. See where he possibly could have gone. Check every box, every tube, every little mouse hole if you have to. In the meantime, I will start up the heat ray. You are not to rest until he is found. I want him at my feet when you get him and you had better not disappoint me." Zim's ambiguous threat lingered in the air as he pressed the fourth, dark red button and held it. His robotic minions rolled away, eager to please their master.

Dib stopped again while crawling down the tube. He was exhausted and he needed a break desperately. His lungs felt as though they were about to shrivel up and he couldn't go three feet without sneezing thanks to the dust. He stopped at one of the air ducts and watched a nearby monitor, hoping to see what his enemy was doing and wondering if he could just jump out of the tube and make a break for the exit. He watched as a giant ray gun slowly descended from a hole in the ceiling Dib had not noticed before.

It was red with a silver barrel, a silver base, and orange stripes along the sides. Dib saw on the display that Zim had taken out what looked to be a joystick from under his seat and was using it to make the ray point out of the lab and through another hole in the wall he had also not noticed. It seemed that there was a lot the boy had been missing. The hole in the wall faced the street across from Zim's front lawn, as though the whole thing was sticking out of the alien's front door. Dib watched as people strolled by casually, as though they didn't see the huge death weapon aimed at them. A few kids even tried to touch it and ride it like some immense metal horse until one of them got shocked by the gun's self-defense force field. The ray itself was incredibly long, about twenty feet and five feet wide and tall. It fit through with about ten feet on top, bottom, and sides to spare. Dib gaped at it from his vantage point inside the hole. He had no idea how it could be that big or how he could have possibly missed it earlier.

Zim began to power it up using a large red switchboard that came up out of a panel in the ground. The monstrosity glowed along the stripes as though it were neon, not strong enough to blind anyone, but bright enough to catch people's attention. Of course, none of the idiotic humans noticed the giant death ray parked in the house in the middle of their street. It was this that Zim was counting on. As the weapon continued starting up, Zim decided to take a break and watch as his roboparents searched for Dib.

The robots in question were busy racing all over the lab, trying to please their master by bringing him what he so desperately desired. They searched high and low in their typical, bumbling fashion. More than once, they collided with each other, so great was their concentration on finding the boy. Dib began to get nervous while watching them, seeing as they were managing to cover vast sections of the lab in a very short amount of time. He gauged that it would take, at their current pace, around four or five minutes to get to the area Dib was in unless he began moving again now. They were around one hundred and fifty yards away when he turned away from the opening and started his turtle crawl forwards.

Zim rubbed his forehead with a naked hand, having taken off his thick gloves due to heat. His shirt also lay on the floor a few feet in front of him, soaked through with perspiration. He was a very pale shade of lime and a thin sheet of sweat covered his completely naked back. He sneezed once or twice as he observed his lackeys' steady, albeit a little slow, progress. They overturned tables, upset boxes, and basically wrecked the lab in their search for the teenager. Containers went flying through the air like heavy, metallic butterflies. Wires were thrown willy-nilly across the room. They paid no attention to how much they destroyed the alien's workplace. Zim scanned the room as they did this with half lidded magenta eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse of some black hair or a certain trench coat. He was extremely fatigued for some reason and couldn't help but yawn a couple times, causing him to inhale cherry flavoured air into his lungs and sending him into coughing fits.

Zim was beginning to get quite bored with the pursuit of the human when he was found ten minutes later, sneezing and coughing up a storm in an air vent about twenty yards from the exit. The roboparents flew him over to Zim on awesome rocket powered skates and dropped him, rather unceremoniously, onto the floor at his feet in a heap.

Dib got up slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements for the robots had each drawn two banana-sized laser guns and were pointing them at his rather large head. The boy was shirtless by this time and his somewhat handsome face was flushed with heat. His glasses were slightly askew and his hair was was sticking to his face and neck, slick with sweat. He glared at the alien as he stood there, 6 feet from his arch nemesis, and still too far away to do anything.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" Zim teased, partially open eyes dancing. He was panting, so it was kind of hard for Dib to understand him at first. "Where did you find him?" he asked the roboparents.

"He was hiding in the air vents, son! We found him by following his clothing and tissue trail!" the "Father" robot said in his typical, stilted English. Zim nodded at him before turning to Dib, head cocked as he waited for an outburst. He didn't have to wait long.

"Let me go, Zim!" Dib screamed at him, already red face turning purple with exertion. He was hot, tired, and felt kind of nauseous for some reason. Dib was not a happy camper, and Zim was only worsening the situation, adding on a headache to boot.

"Oh, but what would be the fun in that? I like to play games with my little piggies before I slaughter them." Dib furrowed his brow in confusion at this.

"What do you mean by games, Zim?"

"Oh, you know, simple games. Battle of the Rock Stars, Vampire Hunter 6, Kill The Insolent Human. What say we start a new round of the last one, hmm?" Zim sneered at the teen, showing all his pink-tinged teeth. His sickly eyes watched the others face drop at this, the poor boy scared out of his mind. Despite the hot room, he paled very quickly, and a new sheet of sweat covered his forehead in a matter of seconds.

"Y-you can't do that!" Dib said, as though pleading. His eyes watered both from dryness and terror. "You can't kill me!"

"Yes, actually, I can. And there's nothing you can do to stop it," the alien told him in a matter-of-fact manner. Dib froze for a few seconds before his ever-reliable brain stepped in to help him out.

"I hid the disc somewhere in this room and without me, you'll never find it!" he lied, and he smirked as the alien's face fell, before it was replaced by a large grin.

"Oh, but I'll just scan the place for it." _I hadn't thought of that! _Zim pressed a couple other buttons underneath the arm of the chair that Dib hadn't seen before. A huge metal contraption, much like a camera, sprung out of the ground and quickly turned 360 degrees before beeping twice. It spit a sheet of paper from its side after a couple seconds and a giant metal arm extended from the top. This limb handed the print-out to Zim, who was a good 30 feet away, before the whole device promptly receded into the ground. The alien held the paper and and looked at it for a couple seconds.

"It says here that you have the CD on you Dib. In your front left pocket, to be precise. Roboparents, remove it!" Zim commanded in a weak voice, straining to keep his eyes open. The "Mother" robot dropped her gun and held Dib's arms behind his back while the "Father" took out disc and handed it to Zim, who slipped it into a slot in the switchboard. The "Mother" then dropped Dib's arms and picked up her gun again and moved, along with the "Father" back into place. All of this happened in under five seconds, so Dib had no time to develop a plan. "Well thank you for your help, Dib-stink. You have helped me complete the final part of my plan. Have fun dying!"

Dib glared at the extraterrestrial, furious at having been found and extremely angry with himself for getting in this situation. He also felt saddened by the fact that he couldn't protect the Earth, but strangely, not as much as he should have been. He was mostly upset that he didn't even know what the plan he had just almost foiled was. Seeing as he was probably going to die in a couple minutes regardless, he decided there was no harm in asking.

"What was the disc for anyway, Zim?" The Irken smiled at this, as though he was expecting it.

"I'm actually glad you asked that, Dib. You see, you're the only one on this stupid ball of filth that could actually appreciate the brilliance of my plan. You see that ray over there? And those air vents up on the ceiling and around the room?" Zim pointed out the different features of the place just in case his audience of one didn't already see them. Dib nodded at him, having already been inside the large openings and having noticed the gun a while back. Zim coughed once, cleared his throat, and went on.

"Well, using the vents, I am going to heat up this room to over 1000 thousand degrees Fahrenheit. It's probably going to take a couple more hours. Then, I'm going to suck the heat into that ray over there using a hose that's going to come out of the bottom. Lastly, I'll use the concentrated heat to burn down cities and set the whole WORLD on fire. Neat, huh?" Zim smiled expectantly at the human, wanting to see a shocked reaction. He was not disappointed.

"What the-How do you-I mean-How idiotic are you? You won't be able to get the room that hot without DYING! And nothing can turn an entire lab into 1000 degrees without setting this place on fire! Even if you could get it to that temperature, you can't SUCK HEAT into a ray gun! That makes no sense whatsoever! How could that even work? And supposing you could, you can't set the whole world on fire! Firefighters would notice! Besides, we live in NORTH AMERICA. You wouldn't be able to get the fires to Europe or Asia! That was the dumbest scheme I've ever heard!" Dib finished his little rant with a puce face and a half disgusted, half pitying look at his enemy. Zim just rolled his eyes.

"Foolish human, my lab is built out of flame-resilient material. And any space traveler with half a brain knows that Irkens can fly through stars without so much as a third-degree burn. Besides, even if I can't set the world on fire, I'll just point it at some people and make them explode." Dib's mouth fell open and he gaped. Zim looked almost bored as Dib sputtered, trying to find words to describe his horror at such a cruel death. The Invader swiveled the chair towards the switchboard behind him and started to push buttons while he waited. "I might even give you the honour of being the first."

"You're sick, Zim!" Dib cried at the alien after thirty seconds of silence, finally finding his voice, anxious and frightened. He began to pant and tear up, shaking uncontrollably. He was absolutely, without a doubt, terrified. At that moment, he thought this was the most scared he would ever be in his entire life. He was wrong.

The Irken's antennae perked up at the words, standing up to their full length of two feet. Then, the alien's entire head swiveled around on its base and he smiled at the human, eyes fully open, skin perfectly clear, and looking like a owl. He got up from his chair and walked backwards towards the human, still facing him. When he got about one foot from Dib, he stopped, enjoying the look of pure horror on his face.

"Am I, Dib? Because I think you are the sick one."

Dib watched as the Irken melted into a puddle of green before him, oozing into the ground. The roboparents melted as well, mixing with each other before being sucked into the floor. The entire room flashed white several times and Dib could feel a cold wetness on his face. The walls melted into the floor, and the ray gun turned from its spot in the wall. Dib was frozen in place, and could only watch as it spun around and took aim at him. He closed his eyes as it zapped him.

"Hey, wake up idiot. It's time for your medicine," Gaz said as she shook Dib roughly. His eyes fluttered open, his face unusually pale and covered in sweat. He took a few breaths and looked around the room, unable to do more than swivel his head.

"Am I dead?" he asked, looking back at his sister.

"No, but you will be if you don't drink this." She shoved a medicine cup of cough syrup into Dib's open hand. He stared at it, uncomprehendingly.

"B-but Gaz, I was just fighting Zim, and he had captured me, and then he melted, and the ray, and white, and zap, and-" Gaz shut him up with a glare.

"You weren't doing anything. You were laying in bed for the past 3 days. That was a dream," she explained calmly, although there was a pained look on her face.

"But I could have sworn-"

"No Dib. Now shut up and get better. Dad says I can't watch tv until your fever goes down."

"Wait, that's why I'm in bed?"

"Yeah, Dib. You're sick."


End file.
